The various flowers of the world have long been appreciated for their natural beauty. Unfortunately, the beauty of natural flowers is but short-lived. Recognizing this, various methods have been devised to preserve flowers so that they can be enjoyed for a longer time. Among these methods of preserving flowers are freeze drying, drying with a desiccant such as silica sand, plasticizing, dipping in paint, treating with chemicals such as glycerine, and the well known method of drying flowers by hanging then upside down.
While the above methods of preserving flowers are generally satisfactory for preserving the appearance of the flower itself, these methods, used alone, generally fail to provide preserved natural flowers suitable for use in floral arrangements and other decorative applications. This is so because the above methods tend to embrittle the stems (pedicels) of the flowers, thereby making them hard to work with. The brittle stems of the flowers tend to break when a floral arranger tries to use the dried flower in an arrangement or other application.
Artificial flowers have been found to be flexible enough for use by a floral arranger without breaking the stem of the artificial flower. This is so because the artificial flower can be made to have a rather resilient stem made of plastic or wire which has been wrapped with tape. However, artificial flowers in some respects are a poor substitute for natural flowers because artificial flowers can lack the delicate detail in shape, texture and color found in natural flowers. Indeed, the difficulty of producing artificial flowers which are convincing copies of natural flowers is formidable. Furthermore, if the artificial flowers are mass produced, it can be difficult to provide the artificial flowers with the random differences that occur among natural flowers on a given plant.
Accordingly, it can be seen that a need yet remains for flowers which exhibit and maintain the physical appearance of natural flowers and which also have resilient stems making the flowers easy to work with. It is to the provision of such flowers therefore that the present invention is primarily directed.